The awkward moment of taking a briefcase to school.

The wisdom of parenting. At times, something to marvel. At others, something so wonderfully stupid, like calling a ginger child, Red.

Shortly after my narrow - yet harrowing stint - as a part-time superhero, my parents gave me another most audacious gift. We were very lucky little sausages as children. We got proper "exy" (short for excellent) presents.

Our father was/is an Austrian sausage, so you see, no such behaviour would have been tolerated. He would often remind me that when he was a child, he made his own presents out of blocks of wood. You wonder if after finishing his latest toy, he feigned surprise and delight when after three weeks of chiselling, he gave it to himself. Cheers of Austrian child-joy, almost certainly followed by some neatly focused sobbing into a bad-ass Austrian Teddy made of Pine.

Perhaps as a vent for the Teddy bear indignation, I remember my dad getting really pissed off with us at times. One Christmas, a kerfuffle over our toys irritated my dad so much he directly threatened, "to send our RC (Remote Control) cars to a Bulgarian orphanage", were we not to stop effing about.

What stuck, was the specific detailing of where he was going to send our cars. It was going to be an orphange in Bulgaria. Not Hungry. Not Hamburg. But Bulgaria. An orphanage to be precise. Not a home for impovrished children, not the Red Cross; but an orphanage. The threat did add a vivid layer as I could actually picture some Eastern European lad called Helmut, 11, skidding my car up the dusty confines of his Alpine institution.

So you couldn't say we were spoilt. We appreciated and were perhaps a little over aware that we were lucky. Every Christmas growing up I would feel a slight uncomfortable guilt, as if that poor Bulgarian orphan, Helmut, was peering in through the trees at our dining table. My dicomfort was such that I could feel his stare lasering the shit plastic monkey toy that fell from my cracker; better than any toy he'd see all Christmas.

And so you see, it was not without a twinge of apprehension that I went to school with a brand new, black leather brief case. This wasn't a posh private school. This was the local comprehensive; a hive of children with varying tones of a green school uniform; like the powers that be knew the people were poor, and allowed parents to be ambivalent when digging around for their fourth child's PE shorts.

As I walked through the playground towards the main school, it was as if I was carrying a box of fox cubs - all eyes gravitated on me. Only I wasn't carrying something fluffy and amazing that was going to make me instantly popular and win the friendship of grubby urchins. I was carrying a black brief case that was about to get me bullied and laughed at.

By morning break it had been opened, tampered with and emptied. By lunch, I wanted the whole thing to be stolen so that I could feel anonymous again. By home time finally made an appearance, I left the gates, not holding it proudly by the handle like a yuppie, but on each side like lunchbox filled with sick.

I can't really blame my father for projecting his own goals and visions onto me. He was doing a kind thing; giving me a taste of being a grown up; letting me feel what it was like to be the business. I can't blame my father. But I will. What was he thinking? Was it, 'Oh, this'll show all the other children that Archibald is a no-nonsense child with strong mathematic capabilities and a fine understanding of how to use a combination code?'

Or perhaps, 'Oh a briefcase is just what a nine year old needs to carry Star Wars figures, a collection of rubbers (erasers, not contraceptives), his pack lunch and Superman costume.' Whatever he was thinking, it certainly wasn't, 'Hang on, sending him to that school with a briefcase will just about get him bullied'.

It is testament to nothing but the luck that my briefcase made it home without having the word WANKER carved into the fake black leather, and testament to common sense that I didn't bring it to that school ever again.